Not all coffees are created equal. Some excel beyond our expectations. They defy convention and push the boundaries of what’s possible in a coffee.

We’re proud to be the exclusive holder of one such coffee. May we introduce our new Panama Golden State Geisha from Los Lajones. With an overture of orchid-like aromatics, this coffee sores with a lush, silky body and rich, stone fruit sweetness that finishes with notes of caramel and fudge. It’s not a coffee, it’s an experience.

Our 2014 offering from Los Lajones received 96 points on CoffeeReview and was awarded the No. 5 Coffee of 2014!

On January 26th and 27th, Temple Coffee was invited to serve coffee to the stars at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Of course, we couldn’t just bring a few pour-overs and some business cards. No, no, no. We called up our friends at La Marzocco who graciously sent a Linea espresso machine and Mazzer grinder for espresso service. For drip coffee, we hit up our pals at Fetco who sent over two batch brewers, which we combined with an EK 43 grinder. Throw into the mix three studly Temple baristas, which included Eton Tsuno (Director of Coffee), Jeremiah Frazier (Wholesale Account Manager), and Cole Cuchna (Director of Education), and we had a coffee setup worthy of an Oscar.

Temple served inside the St. Regis Deer Valley Hotel who hosted the VIP receptions for films like Z for Zachariah, The Mask We Live In, and more. The receptions were organized by Rand Luxury. We joined sponsors like LG, Wider Yachts, Cohiba cigars, and more. We met film directors, producers, film executives, and of course some actors, too. They had the pleasure of trying our exclusive Don Pepe Baby Geisha blend as well as our Costa Rica Sonora Venecia Natural, which is also a Temple exclusive. For espresso, we brought our classic Dharma Blend, which we offered as a double-shot, macchiato, cappuccino, or small latte.

All in all, it was a great time, and we were honored to represent Sacramento’s growing coffee scene to a new, influential audience.

A wholesale client of ours recently returned from a trip to Bali. Being a well-intentioned coffee enthusiast, he generously brought us a bag of Kopi Luwak. Aka civet coffee. Aka the cat sh*t coffee.

The allure of this notoriously expensive coffee has nothing to do with the climate or elevation in which it’s grown. Nothing to do with cultivar. Rather, its fame resides in a very specialized form of processing. First, a small, cat-like animal called the civet eats coffee cherries, which ferment while passing through the civet’s digestive system. Once excreted, the indigestible seeds or coffee beans are picked from the feces in all their ooey-gooey glory.

(Note: You should be grossed out. Please, be grossed out.)

In the coffee industry, it’s common knowledge that Kopi Luwak is little more than marketing hype. By most accounts, it tastes like the thing from which it came (remember, that thing is poop). That’s because the coffee is rewarded with high prices based on civet processing and little else. Not cup quality, not growing conditions, not traditional processing or varietal. But because of wildly outlandish prices and movies like The Bucket List, Kopi Luwak carries mystique and novelty that many people find attractive. That’s because Kopi Luwak is more than a coffee, it’s an event. Good, great, or horrible, it’s a story you tell friends.

Ironically, you can say similar things about a coffee that many specialty connoisseurs revere above all else. A coffee that often demands outrageously high prices. A coffee you tell your friends about, and somewhere in the story is how much you paid for this illustrious bean. Of course, we’re talking about Geisha, a rare coffee varietal typically grown at extremely high elevation. While Geisha often yields what coffee professionals consider a superb cup, I think we can agree there’s a certain amount of mystique and novelty about it as well.

The opportunity to pit these two monsters of marketing against one another is rare. And what better arena to showcase the showdown than our weekly public cupping? Let the people speak. Is Geisha really that good? Is Luwak really that bad? How did they compare to a typical cup of specialty grade coffee?

To answer these questions, we assembled a diverse table of coffees: a Kenya Gichuka, the Kopi Luwak, a Costa Rica Honey, a Guatemala Geisha, and Temple’s Panama La Esmeralda Geisha, a coffee produced by the most famous coffee farm in the world.

While it was important to taste these coffees blind, we prefaced the cupping by informing our 20 or so attendees that indeed they’d be tasting a coffee that came from the southside of a civet. Leave now or forever hold your peace type of thing.

Turns out, we had an adventurous crowd. No one bailed. Game on.

The rules were simple: try each coffee, take a few mental notes, and select a few favorites. We also encouraged them to try and pick out the Kopi Luwak. Be it amazing or unpalatable, let’s see if it stands out in someway.

The cupping proceeded with a mix of modest slurps, spit cups, and a little Coltrane to set the mood. I knew where the Kopi Luwak coffee was on the table, so I secretly watched the faces of the attendees when they tried it. Either they all had phenomenal poker faces or it wasn’t horrible enough to involuntarily convulse.

Once the tasting concluded, we pointed to each coffee on the table and asked, by a show of hands, which was their favorite. Aside from a few hands here and there, all the action took place when we reached the juggernauts on the table.

Pointing to the Kopi Luwak, we asked, “Who liked this one best?”

No hands. Zero, zilch, nada.

Pointing to the Esmeralda Geisha, “Who liked this one best?”

It wasn’t even close. Half the people in attendance raised their hand.

Game, set, match: Geisha by a landslide.

We asked the attendees to describe the Luwak. “Musty.” “Weird.” “An encyclopedia of roasting defects.” “Rancid barbeque sauce.” “Petrified dinosaur droppings steeped in bathtub water.” Ok, that last one was Washington Post’s food writer Tim Carmen, but you get the picture. Clearly, in terms of cup quality or drinkability, this particular Kopi Luwak does not carry its weight in gold.

(On a side note, a few of us were mesmerized by the amount of oil that continually beaded to the top of the Luwak after scooping out the grounds. It just kept rising like some unidentifiable sewage.)

The Esmeralda Geisha, however, was described as “full of life.” “Maybe the best coffee I’ve ever had.” “Fruity, floral.” “Like nothing I’ve ever tasted in coffee.” Just my humble opinion, but these types of coffee experiences are worth the pretty penny. They’re memorable in pleasant ways. They escape the savage exoticism of Luwak while retaining genuine, justifiable excitement and wonder.

We held this cupping to dispel myths. To challenge hype. As specialty coffee grows, inevitable is the inclusion of big marketing dollars and six-dollar-burger like campaigns that attempt to cash in on an expanding market. Our attendees walked away with very solidified opinions about at least one such gimmick. They also walked away with that rancid bathtub taste still in their mouths, because holy crap, that stuff stays with you a while.

Temple loves Instagram. On December 20th, we’re hosting an Instameet for a Cause. The idea is simple: local Instagrammers (and regular folk, too!) will meet at our 1010 9th St. retail location, each bringing a gift for donation to the Sacramento Children’s home. From there, attendees will talk photography, take photos, drink coffee, and explore downtown Sacramento. It’s a great way to put a face to those inspiring Instagram accounts you’ve been following and meet new people in our community.

BONUS: All gift donating participants will receive 5 EXTRA ENTRIES in our current Holiday Giveaway Contest, the one where we’re giving away a $300 Techniworm MoccaMaster just by joining our newsletter. Not into Instagram? You can still donate, and still receive your extra entries between 10am-noon. Winners will be notified by e-mail, so be sure to sign up for our newsletter by visiting the templecoffee.com homepage.

After being awarded the #1 Coffee of 2013 by CoffeeReview last year, we’re pleased to announce that TWO of our coffees made this year’s list. First, our Kenya Makwa AB came in at No. 19 with all its orange and dark chocolate goodness. And who can forget our Panama Los Lajones Bambu Geisha and its distinct stone fruit intensity and soft, silky body? This one ranked No. 5 in the world.

Of course, coffees are seasonal and most that made the list are long gone. But if you’re looking for similar offerings, check out our Panama La Esmeralda Geishaand Kenya Gachika AA and decide for yourself if these will make the list next year!

Went to visit Ismael of Capim Bronco and Sao Siilvestre, “large” farms in Cerrado. These two farms are close to the highest elevation, if not the highest elevation in Cerrado at 1200-1300masl. Ismael started a micro lot project last year, and is continuing this year with good success.

It should be noted that Cerrado is famous for producing bulk coffee, dried on the tree type naturals, hence most of the coffee from the region is commercial quality, good/fine cup (clean, no major defects 70-80 pts coffees). However, the natural micro-lots here that are dried from selected cherries can be phenomenal.

As with all large producers, Ismael is 100% mechanized, however he is going one step farther with his micro-lot project. After picking, he has invested in developing a color sorter for cherries. The machine uses an optical laser to separate ripe, green, and over ripe cherry. It seems like the machine works well, with about a 90% accuracy. In order to get the cherry even cleaner, cherries are hand-picked after the mechanical/optical sorting.

Other then cherry sorting, I witnessed “volcano” drying. This is an old technique where the cherries are dried for 2-3 days as normal on the patio to create a raisin. Then the cherries are moved in to mounds or “volcanos”. The process is as follows:

Morning: Cherries are in mounds on the patio covered by tarps from the previous day and uncovered “when the sun hits the pavement.”

The top 1-2cm are scraped off the outside into a surrounding mound creating a sort of pattern with a volcano in the middle, a moat of patio, then a surrounding levy of cherries. This process is repeated every hour until about 12pm when all the coffee is in the levy pattern and nothing is left as the volcano in the middle. At this point the coffee is moved in the same fashion back to the middle in volcano form.

At the end of the day, the coffee is left in a mound, recovered, and repeated for 3-4 weeks.

This type of drying prevents hot spots (fermentation) and facilitates a consistent drying temperature all day and night, ending in a more complex, clean, better tasting natural.

Day 6, Friday, August 1

Visited Fazenda Serrinha today. This is a new farm purchased 5 years ago. The owners here are truly focused on quality and I believe we will be seeing some very nice coffees from here in the near future.

After purchasing the farm, all coffee plants were ripped out and replanted. Also, all the existing facilities were torn down and replaced with state of the art buildings and equipment. In all my travels, I haven’t seen a cleaner, more organized farm. Amazing.

The coffees here were cupping solid 83-86pts even with an improper roast level. However, most of the coffees are blended into larger lots making the 88+ coffees difficult to find. With our recommendation, Fazenda Serrinah will be trying to separate the exceptional 10-20 bag lots in the future. This is very promising to me since the most difficult part is getting to solid speciality. When 85/6 pt coffees exist, the 88+ do as well. The only thing that typically needs to be done is separation.

Recap:

In all, this trip was great. We got to visit 5 different growing areas, cup to asses quality (which is looking very good), strengthen old relationships, and build new ones. I can safely say, that over 5 days, I was able to cup through samples that represented 20,000 bags of coffee, and definitely the top 5% of quality production in Brazil.

Our 2014/15 Brazils will be a force to be reckoned with. Watch out palate… be prepared to taste Brazil like never before.

It was cold last night. Didn’t sleep very well, especially with the packs of barking dogs outside. Woke up this morning at 8am, took a shower, and lost power halfway through. That’s the way to wake up: ice cold shower… After a breakfast of bread, cheese, ham and eggs, we’re moving to visit Sergio at Serra Do Bone, and the owner of the Hotels farm.

As always, Serra do Bone didn’t disappoint. Sergio has to be one of the best producers in Araponga, or Brazil for that matter. Quality and consistency every time. Thankfully this time we were able to see some of his process, and what he believed to be his “Auction” lot for the year. It looked spectacular.

After the visit, we took another long drive. 6hrs to South Minas, Santo Antonio, where Fazenda Santo Antonio and Pedro reside.

Day 4, Wednesday, July 30

Slept well at F. Santo Antonio. As always, Pedro is an awesome host and their house is amazing. Visited his farm today and got to see the entire mechanical process. Turns out that FSA is 400,000 hectars or about 1,600,000 acres making it the top 5% of large farms in Brazil. FSA is having a tough year this year due to drought and a large harvest last year (16,000 bags). This year, due to tough conditions, they are only producing 8,000 bags.

Quality seemed to be up from last year, or at least more consistent. CD’s or pulped naturals were cupping in the solid 85pt range and we had one amazing natural at 87+ but I think it will be better with rest ending up at 88+. Good things coming this year from FSA.

After FSA we traveled another 5hrs to Cerrado where we will sleep, wake up, and visit 2 large farms… LARGE farms. 100,000+ hectars. I have never been anywhere like this, but am expecting a typical “Brazil” flavor profile. Hopefully, I’ll be pleasantly surprised with some gems of Cerrado.

Some background info on Cerrado: Cerrado is a region in Minas Gerais state, however the word cerrado actually means savannah. In Brazil, there are three typical types of cerrado land: arid, high dessert, and areas around rivers with porous soil type. The Cerrado region for coffee is the arid type. The Cerrado region is a high altitude plateau at around 1200masl.

Pre-1970’s the cerrado landscape was considered trash where nothing would grow and a harsh environment. In the 70’s the Brazilian government actually gave away thousands of hectars of land in what is now Cerrado. This is when coffee production began in the region. After the cultivation of coffee in the land, prices skyrocketed making Cerrado one of the most expensive places to purchase land in Minas Gerais today.

At the same time in the 70’s, it was discovered that the cerrado land scape, actually contained nutrient rich, deep, well-drained, but moisture holding soils, perfect for coffee, soy beans, corn, and a variety of other crops. Rainforest lands around the Amazon, even though seemingly rich soil, are actually poor soil types with thin top soil making it difficult to grow things. Cerrado ended up being the perfect environment to cultivate coffee. People in Brazil call the cerrado the upside-down rainforest: a place where all the water and nutrients are underground instead of above.

Last week, Temple’s Director of Coffee Eton Tsuno traveled to Brazil to source this year’s Farm to Cup Brazilian coffees. We had him track his experience with live journal entries each day.

Day 1: Sunday, July 27

After 23 hours of flying and layovers, and a 6hr drive to Espirto Santo, I finally arrived to my first destination: the city of Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais. From here, we will wake up at 8am to drive 30km to the neighboring town of Castelo and the smaller community of Batela where our current Tomanzini coffee comes from. Espirto Santo is now a known state for producing high quality coffees though it wasn’t always this way. Historically, 80% of the states income came from coffee, however pre-2000, most of the coffee was sold locally and transported to Cerrado for blending and eventually being lost in the market and sold as Cerrado. In 2000, the local government pushed for quality coffee and began to support small farmers to send their coffees directly to market as Espírito Santo.

Day 2: Monday, July 28

Waking up and rushing to Batela in the rain for a farm visit. Driving wasnt too bad as many of the roads are either paved or well-maintained dirt roads. Of course, the Range Rover Discovery helps too.

Batela is a community of 3rd-generation Italian immigrants. Hence, the Tomanzini family settled here. Batela was first famous for gold. After much of the gold was mined from the lands, the immigrant families started planting coffee. Mostly Caturra 81(a good cultivar).

Lots of mist/fog make this area a unique micro-climate. Most of the coffee here is grown at 1000masl or below making it an improbable place for quality coffee. However, I think due to the morning mist/fog until 10-11am and its close proximity to the ocean (about 50km), climate here is cool slowing down the maturation of the coffee and lending itself to high quality coffee grown around 800-1100 MASL.

The Tomazini family welcomed us with open arms, showing us around the plantation in the rain and mud, and even offering us lunch. Tasty… chicken, rice, beans, harts of palm, polenta and, of course, spaghetti.

After the farm visit, we cupped at a local collection point for Castello coffees. This office is actually run by the local government as a place to market and showcase coffees of the region. We were met by two newspaper reporters who took photos for tomorrow’s local newspaper.

We were pleasantly surprised by the quality on the table. These were fresh coffees, just off the patios, and first pickings. We had 8 coffees, scoring from 82 – 87 points. Great potential here, we will definitely be showcasing Castelo coffees for micro lots and as a part of our blend. Perhaps a Brazil Temple Select: Castelo is in order.

The day finally ended with a 7hr drive to Araponga, the region where Serra Do Bone comes from. Yep, we arrived at almost 12pm. Cheers, see you at 8am for the same all over again!!

Temple Coffee recently teamed with City Scout, a new lifestyle guide for all things hip in Sacramento. Last week, we unveiled The Coffee Story, a five-part blog series that traces key figures and positions that contribute to bringing you your daily cup of coffee. You can view the culminating video counterpart above, and visit thecityscouts.com to view The Coffee Story blog series.